The present invention relates generally to fruit juice extracting machines.
Exemplary of one well-known fruit juice extracting machine, as used commercially in the citrus industry, is that disclosed in the Wells U.S. Pat. No. 2,631,625, which is hereby incorporated into the present disclosure by reference.
Briefly, the juice extracting machine in this patent discloses a vertically mounted rotary fruit feeder which is arranged to deliver citrus fruit to the holding cups of a pair of complementary conveyors which carry the fruit to a cutting knife which separates the fruit into sections which are respectively carried by each conveyor into engagement with rotary reamers carried by a rotary head, which remove the juice and juice-bearing materials from the peel sections which are thereafter ejected by ejector wheels into a peel outlet chute, while the collected juice, pulp and rag are conducted to another chute.
In industrial juice extracting machines, such as that disclosed by the above-noted patent, grid means are usually provided for separating the extracted juice and pulp from the peel, and considerable time and effort has been expended to develop separating means which would more effectively and efficiently separate the peel and other contaminants from the juice, pulp and rag. For example, it has heretofore been known to provide an oscillating separator grid such as disclosed in the James U.S. Pat. No. 3,183,955.
While many of the prior developments for the separating means resulted in marked improvements in the operation, it has been found that the prior known arrangements had undesirable operating limitations and would not operate satisfactorily under cartain adverse conditions, for example, when undersized fruit, broken or rotten fruit, split or soft fruit were supplied to the juice extractor and collected as a contaminant in the juice, pulp and rag. The present invention seeks to overcome the disadvantages of the prior known separator arrangements by providing an improved and unique roller grid arrangement in which a plurality of synchronously rotated rollers operate to positively move the contaminants along a delivery path on the upper side of the rollers to a discharge opening, while at the same time permitting juice, rag and pulp to pass between the rollers into a discharge path containing a screw conveyor for positively moving the juice, pulp and rag to a discharge opening.